- The Buckeyes are pretty good.
- The defense is quite good. And they might be awesome. They are very highly ranked in terms of points allowed and those types of metrics. We have not allowed teams to score much against us. And the longest play we allowed was some kind of weird Statue-of-Liberty-Fumblerooski-trickeration against Rutgers. So, coach Knowles has done a few things right this year. Presumably Michigan won’t be able to throw deep balls where we have no defensive backs playing defense. But still, have we played anyone who is good, aside from Notre Dame?
- Other defensive things: I’ve enjoyed Sonny Styles flying in to stop the run and generally being all over the place. Tyleik Williams (big #91) is a menace and might be making himself some real money with his play this year. Steele Chambers is just consistently solid. Igbinosin and Burke are excellent corners. They’re fun to watch and I’d like it if they crushed this Michigan offense that also hasn’t played anybody.
- A little more on our schedule: Notre Dame is solid, but Penn State is not. Those are our good wins. I think we played a little better vs. Penn State when compared to Michigan’s performance. But still, I would have liked for Penn State to try and throw the ball forward against Michigan. It’s one of the things that we do in modern college football – try to gain yards by throwing forward passes. So it’s hard to say if we are really good, because Penn State might be the worst good team in college football history.
- Marvin Harrison Jr. and Trayveon Henderson are awesome.
- Kyle McCord looks like he’s getting better. Is he Craig Krenzel 2.0? I’m not sure. But I’ve seen enough that I think he could get us over the finish line. With a lot of help from the defense. Kyle had great stats vs. MSU, but those should be discounted because MSU is a complete disaster. When the coach gets fired for harassing the anti-harassment trainer right after he got a $95M contract extension, you know things have gone off the rails. (It appears MSU is going to recoup $80M of that $95M).
- Also, related to McCord, we were VERY spoiled by CJ Stroud. He’s a top-10 QB in the NFL as a rookie! We basically had a pro QB for 2 years. It’s one of the reasons why our 2 losses to UM seem so fishy. CJ played pretty well in those 2 games, all things considered. But he was running for his damn life for the duration of both games.
- The best thing that could happen to the OSU/Michigan rivalry is this insane cheating scandal. The bucks killed the wolverines for 20 years and then 2 of our really good teams got destroyed by them in ’21 and ’22. From 2001 to 2019, the bucks went 17-2.1 And it might be because they knew every single thing our offense was going to do based on a very elaborate and weird cheating scheme? I really like the video of the buckeyes changing a play and then you see the entire michigan team immediately know what’s coming. Here’s a segment from the fine folks at 10TV breaking it down. Based on the rules for this kind of stuff, it appears to be cheating.
- I follow a few buckeye blogger people on twitter and I’m enjoying the haughty certitude that the Michigan football program is going to be nuked by the NCAA. Buckeye fans are very confident. When has the NCAA ever done anything that made sense? And I’m also enjoying the hilarious replies by the corresponding UM blog boys (copyright Kevin Durant). “Where’s the evidence!,” they demand, as if that’s how twitter posting works.
- I also enjoyed the Penn State / Michigan pre-game on Nov 11. I didn’t see any signs held by Michigan fans that say something like “At least we didn’t facilitate child rape for 16 years. #JerrySandusky.” A Wikipedia refresher. Maybe the Fox Big Noon producers just didn’t show them. That would have been my move if I were a Michigan fan feeling a little defensive about our now-tainted recent success.
- Provided the Bucks take care of Minnesota and the Wolverines take care of Maryland, the OSU/Michigan game is going to be pretty wild. There’s going to be so many tributes to the martyr Jim Harbaugh. Was he murdered by marauding Buckeye fans crossing the border and invading Ann Arbor? Did he die a hero’s death? (I guess Toledo is Gaza in this very inappropriate analogy). College football fans have an amazing ability to completely lack all perspective of the outside world. And Michigan fans are the current leaders in that department.
- In 2020, Michigan cancelled the game b/c those dirty boys couldn’t handle some Covid protocols. And they were apparently planning to become giant cheaters. The 2010 game I’m counting as a victory, because the game was played and we won 37-7. But, it has since been vacated due to the worst scandal that has ever happened in college sports, trading a small piece of jewelry for some tattoos. ↩︎
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